Chinese local governments are flooding the debt market with a new type of bond, lining up $200bn in issuance designed to fund infrastructure investment as Beijing seeks to stimulate a slowing economy, the Financial Times reported. China’s parliament in March approved a quota of Rmb1.35tn ($197bn) for issuance of “special-purpose” bonds for 2018, more than the combined quotas for the previous two years. But until recently, actual issuance was sluggish as local governments were under pressure to cut borrowing.
Read more
Turkey’s finance minister tried to rebuild shattered market confidence in his government’s ability to manage the economy by promising to cut public spending by nearly $10bn in a sweeping austerity programme that would put the brakes on growth, the Financial Times reported. The announcement by Berat Albayrak, who was put in charge of the economy two months ago by his father-in-law, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, comes just a week after a surprise decision by the central bank to sharply raise interest rates in the face of a mounting currency crisis.
Read more
One of India’s most acquisitive companies is buying up cement kilns across the country, going from big to bigger. It’s got the right plan, but who’s buying the cement and actually building? Ultratech Cement Ltd. is one of the world’s biggest cement manufacturers, with the capacity to put out 90 million tons a year from plants sprinkled across India, Bloomberg News reported. It purchased distressed assets from Jaiprakash Associates Ltd. and is battling to buy even more out of bankruptcy. Ultratech is taking a smart tack in India’s fragmented cement industry: consolidation.
Read more
Indian billionaire Rana Kapoor is being forced from the helm of Yes Bank, the lender he has led since founding it in 2004, as regulators tighten their oversight of the Indian financial sector, the Financial Times reported. The board of Yes Bank, the country’s fourth-largest private-sector bank by assets, had proposed that Mr Kapoor’s term as chief be extended until the end of August 2021. But the Reserve Bank of India has decided that Mr Kapoor, 61, may stay only until the end of January 2019, Yes Bank said in a stock exchange announcement, without giving further details.
Read more
When Chinese businessman Yuan Yafei met British Prime Minister Theresa May in Shanghai this February, he vowed to keep pushing for further economic collaboration between China and the U.K., where his Sanpower Group owned the 169-year-old department-store chain, House of Fraser. But only six weeks later, Yuan’s group was pulling back from the U.K., beginning a months-long bid to sell the retailer that had been battered by online rivals, a weakening pound and mounting costs, Bloomberg News reported.
Read more
Turkey’s banks agreed on Wednesday to help companies struggling with debt as the country’s finance minister prepared to set out a plan seen as critical to limiting the fallout from a currency crisis, the Financial Times reported. The Banks Association of Turkey said the nation’s lenders would strive to accommodate companies that needed a temporary reprieve on loan repayments because of “a temporary disruption of the balance between income and expenditure”.
Read more
One of India’s key shadow banks is in trouble. IL&FS Group, a vast conglomerate that funds infrastructure projects across the world’s fastest-growing major economy, sent shock waves through credit markets when it missed several debt repayments, Bloomberg News reported. That’s causing concern among the myriad investors, including private individuals, who had regarded the group’s debt as rock-solid.
Read more
Lenders to India’s power industry are scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss ways to resolve 1.4 trillion rupees ($19.2 billion) of stressed assets that’s hobbling the sector, people with knowledge of the matter said. The meeting will be hosted in New Delhi by Power Finance Corp., a state-owned firm that lends to the country’s electricity generators, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the details aren’t public, Bloomberg News reported. Representatives from the finance and power ministries, and Rural Electrification Corp.
Read more
South Korea’s central bank warned on Thursday that household debt was growing much faster than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average as large mortgages and high rents drive up indebtedness, Reuters reported. “Since the end of the global financial crisis, South Korea’s household debt growth has significantly exceeded that of the OECD, and the trend will continue,” the Bank of Korea (BOK) said in a financial stability report.
Read more
China’s HNA Group is in talks with banks to find a buyer for its CWT logistics firm just nine months after acquiring the Singaporean company in a $1 billion deal, six people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The sale, if completed, would be the latest in a series of divestments aimed at slashing debt at the aviation-to-financial services conglomerate that is restructuring its far-flung operations, Reuters reported.
Read more